Credit Card, Student And Auto Debt All Hit Record Highs In December

While we reported last month that in November US credit card debt had just surpassed the previous all time high hit in July 2008 just before all hell broke loose when Lehman filed for bankruptcy two months later, there was a slight chance that in December this number had declined after the record surge in November credit-funded spending (which was just revised from $28BN to $31BN).

Well, that did not happen, and while December total consumer credit increased by less than the expected $20BN, it was still an impressive $18.45BN, of which $5.1billion was credit card debt and $13.3 billion non-revolving - or student and auto - loans.

More importantly, with the latest $5.1 billion increase in revolving, or credit card, debt the total is now $1.027.9 trillion, the highest number on record.

Meanwhile, non-revolving credit which with the exception of one definition change month, has never gone down, also hit a new all time high of $2.813 trillion, a monthly increase of $13.34 billion.

What about its components? Well, with everything else going for record highs, we doubt it will be a surprise to anyone that both student debt and auto loans hit a new all time high in the quarter ending December 2017, with $1.491 trillion for the former, and $1.11 trillion for the latter.

So for anyone still wondering why the US economy closed 2017 with an upward GDP burst, here is your answer. The problem is that with the personal savings rate just shy of all time lows...

... and with US consumers deep in the red on their household debt, just what will keep the US economic expansion going from this point on is far less clear, especially if the stock market has now peaked, as recent events suggest.

FED think they are the only ONE "SMART" who can create "value" from thin air, sorry boys, we get it, and well aware of this SCAM. You Print, we going to borrow, you ain't gonna pay back, we either, f*ck you, let's play...

Fuck this Article... We know $1.4 T in Student Debt... at least $1.1 Subprime debt? Was that it for total of $2.5 Trillion Risk in US Consumer Markets?

= God Damn, ZH is pussy talk... Index this, Index that, but no real context or numbers.
Well and with population of like 322 Million, 146 Million are working, it seems employment in Govt is like 1/3 of working people when you add in contractors, education, universities, health care, telecommunications, social websites.

FRED Charts have one for Federal Employee Total
Education and health services 23,456
Health care and social assistance 19,609.7

You can quote B-1 Table from Federal Reserve (thousands of employees)

Government 22,511
Federal Government 2,755
Federal, except U.S. Postal Service 2,156.3
U.S. Postal Service 598.9
State government 5,294
State government education 2,628.0
State government, excluding education 2,666.1
Local government 14,462
Local government education 8,165.7
Local government, excluding education 6,296.6

There are plenty of part-time, high-turnover, temporary and 1099-gig “jobs” at low wage levels, geared to those with “somethin’ comin in’ from spouses, ex spouses or welfare and child-tax-credit welfare. They are often just 19th century sweatshop-style piecwork. The now-doubled, refundable child tax credits up to $6,444 now equal more than 1/3rd of what many full-time jobs pay for the entire year. When you cannot cover a full range of household bills, including rent that consumes half or more than half of your monthly pay, with earned-only income, a job is not really a job. It is a gig, like the babysitting gigs worked by teenagers for pocket money, when their major bills are paid by unearned income from their parents. Employment numbers should separate the bill-paying jobs from the gigs.

Inflation destroys Ethos & Morality (Moral Behavior, no more whistleblowers, blokes with debt, shielas, they can't afford to be black balled out of a career and be set back years or a decade...
Inflation destroys the protections of a Free Press...
Inflation puts our kids in the mind set that they can never make it, perhaps drives them to prostitution, selling drugs, joining drug gangs, getting 'blood' shooting at someone or killing someone to get their 'street cred'...
Inflation destroys the ability of people who lost protection of 'Bread Winner Jobs' after women joined the work force at half wages and jobs were designed to be functional, not career paths, not managerial... jobs get sent away and inflation is planned by both Fiscal & Monetary policy... and even Currency policy as we have ever expanding Fiat...

- Therefore, Planned Inflation either Monetary or Fiscal is Immoral, breaks Whistleblowing & MSM Investigative Journalism... breeds people that have debt and forward debt through kids or mates education or relocation expenses... plus loss of pensions/401Ks/Retirement benefits... who can oppose a War Monger Govt? Who can say wow we are destroying the opportunity for youth to buy houses... wow we have priced ourselves out of war time logistics and weapons purchases at $1 Trillion Annual MIC Spending but no end in sight or solution to $1 Trillion Annual MIC spending... What other industries are too expensive now... Utilities? Highway work? Nursing Care? Retirement Housing? Health Care. Pharmacy. Gasoline.

Half of the people on welfare — more when you count child-tax-credit welfare — are white. A higher percentage of minorities are on welfare, though. Sadly, Black men — the group hardest hit by mass-scale, welfare-boosted immigration, get lumped in with the womb-producing welfare consumers, although they qualify for near-zero welfare. The reason Hispanic men benefit is that they are sole breadwinners, rather than their women, in multi-family households, where more than one momma collects $450 per month on average just in free food for US-born kids, when the father of her kids works part time, staying below the earned-income limit for welfare in [traceable] income. Most Black men, like childless/single women, non-custodial parents and single moms with grown children, do not have the set up provided to the single mom citizens of all skin-pigmentation hues for sex, reproduction and working part time to stay below the earned-income limit for everything from free food, to free housing, to free electricity, to monthly cash assistance, to refundable child tax credits of up to $6,444 (now doubled). This is a self-sustaining system, keeping wages AND, more importantly, hours down, as womb-producing welfare consumers have a financial incentive to work few hours for mostly low wages. They qualify for welfare that way. Too bad Barbara Jordan cannot come back to life, giving the pro-welfare-buttressed-mass-immigration, pro-wage-cutting fake progressives a piece of her mind.

The terrifying thing is people with large debts are going to look to government to fix it for them. And our government is likely to try to "fix" it and end up screwing the rest of us. Students are already expecting a student loan write off. People who trusted the government to manage their pensions will look for a bailout.

It makes you wonder if the goal shouldn't be to have a zero net worth. You won't owe anyone anything nor will you have something for the government to take.

Kid at my workplace mops floors on the weekend. His Dad is a plumber. In 3 years he'll finish high school and apprentice in a trade, get paid while he's doing it. His older sister started mopping floors at 15 and is now asst. manager, she's 25 paid cash for her new car and bought her first home at 19. Pretty as could be and smartest young lady I've ever met but all she'd get from ZHers is sneers and insults because she's heavy.

Yes TTGL agrees. TTGL has come to conclusion that it will go on until hyperinflation is so apparent, the .gov can’t lie anymore. Until then,PPT will prop up any market melt down, print print and buy all the bonds. The date of obvious hyperinflation is anyone’s guess. This shit shoe has gone much longer than TTGL would have ever thought. When the plebes realize hyperinflation, then it ends. TTGL heard of hyperinflation risk going back to 2002, when he came to realization of what crap the dollar is. Been watching the shit show since....in awe.

its easy to say, much harder to actually do, but if i was a young person saddled with huge student loan debt that will never go away, i'd be looking at absconding to someplace like phillipines. building craze like crazy. any able bodied bright young person could thrive there. wouldn't be great, but std of living not any less than 'murka for many. u think u have so much to lose when u r young, u really don't. again, easy to say.

Debt handled if you get a gov job, so let’s say they all go that route, we’re looking at a pretty big nut to cover. That would make a tax rate of death... yeah that’s a good plan if you’re a progressive thinker. Public sector death, got it!